Morphometrics of eight Chinese cavefish species

Chinese cavefishes are a bizarre and interesting vertebrate taxa, but one with relatively little research. China holds the highest global cavefish diversity, accounting for about one-third of known species. Sinocyclocheilus is the largest genus of cavefishes in the world and is endemic to the south of China. The distribution of Sinocyclocheilus species is very narrow, and sometimes they inhabit just a single cave; this feature increases the vulnerability to extinction. With this study we provide the first comprehensive dataset related to the morphometrics of eight Sinocyclocheilus species. In addition to enhancing our knowledge on these poorly known species we aim to provide a dataset useful for future comparative analyses aiming to better understand the adaptive ability of cavefishes.